Visiting the Labor Market

We might need to adjust how we think about the labormarket. Yes, we know that the unemployment rate for February was 8.9% and that 13.7 million people are jobless. However, to encourage thoughts about the future, an M.I.T. economist tells us more.

3) Low-skill, low wage workers which take us to “low-education food service, personal care, and protective service occupations.”

According to M.I.T.’s David Autor, #2, the middle, has experienced diminishing opportunities during the past 2 decades while the top and the bottom of the labormarket have had expanding job potential. Most important, though, are the two challenges cited in Dr. Autor’s paper. 1) Skilled workers are in greatest demand but educational levels have not kept up with our increased need for them. 2) Because we have expanding job opportunities at the top and the bottom of the labormarket, we have greater polarization–a greater divide about which he is concerned.

The basic question for us is trajectory. Do we approve of the direction in which the labormarket is heading? What are the policy implications for wages, educational attainment, and employment opportunities?

The Economic Lesson

To be defined as a member of the labor force, an individual is: -16 years old or older -employed -unemployed and looking for a paying job

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Elaine Schwartz has spent her career sharing the interesting side of economics. At the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she has been honored through an Endowed Chair in Economics and the History Department chairmanship. At the same time, she developed curricula and wrote several books including Understanding Our Economy (originally published by Addison Wesley as Economics Our American Economy) and Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). Elaine has also written in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press) and was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom.” Beyond the classroom, she has presented Econ 101 ½ talks and led
workshops for the Foundation for Teaching Economics, the National Council on Economic Education and for the Concord Coalition.